2. THE WIRE
Set in Baltimore, this show centers around the city’s inner-city drug scene. The show depicts the lives of every part of the drug “food chain”, from junkies to dealers, and from cops to politicians.
THE WIRE is one of the most unusual shows on TV. It was a massive show dealing with a gritty set of subjects and it never attempted to sugar coat any aspects of it’s subject matter. No one was all good and while there were a few characters that had no redeeming qualities to them, the majority of the “bad guys” were just as complex and multifaceted as the supposed “good guys”.
Favorite Episode: “Middle Ground” (Season 3/Episode 11)
This episode of THE WIRE brought the long and incredibly interesting journey of Stringer Bell (Idris Elba in his breakthrough performance) to an end and it features some really great acting especially in scenes between Stringer and his partner/best friend Avon Barksdale as both men betray the other and also in the final confrontation between Stringer and Omar and Brother Mouzone where Stringer’s myriad number of sins all come back to haunt him.
Crustula 
Those are my two favorite HBO shows too! I definitely need to see Rome still. That is one that I missed.
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Rome is great…I recommend it to everyone whenever I find out they haven’t seen it and the best part is that it is only two seasons so you can run through the whole awesome experience without having to take a huge chunk of time out of your life.
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Eastbound and Down is my #1-4 and #6.
Couldn’t agree more on The Sopranos. Everyone kept pointing to the Russian guy that escaped Paulie and Christopher in the Pine Barrens (home of the Jersey Devil!) as a dangling plot that was bound to come back and bite everyone in the ass, but nothing came of it. Instead, we got 2 or 3 seasons where the biggest stories were Johnny Sack’s fat wife and Ralphie killing a horse.
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Looking back on it there were so many unresolved dangling plot threads and just totally dropped potential storylines on the Sopranos. I think a lot of people look at the show with rose colored glasses and recall it as being much better than it actually was.
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